


this is already bigger than love

by sinagtala (strikinglight)



Category: Fire Emblem Echoes: Mou Hitori no Eiyuu Ou | Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia
Genre: F/F, Gen, Missing Scene, that's it that's the fic, the people who love celica are worried about her
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-09
Updated: 2018-09-09
Packaged: 2019-07-10 08:05:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,611
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15945221
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/strikinglight/pseuds/sinagtala
Summary: A look.Truth be told, Mae knows she should have been watching the trees for unwanted presences, signs of danger. But she had seen the light in Celica’s tent and had just—lost the ability to look at anything else. Some guard she’d be, in the event of an ambush.A look, huh.“It’s all right,” Conrad tells her, like he can hear her thoughts. After a pause he adds, a little wistfully, “She’s always been easy to love. Though you’d probably know that better than I would, now.”





	this is already bigger than love

**Author's Note:**

  * For [brella](https://archiveofourown.org/users/brella/gifts).



> I'm doing a dialogue challenge on Twitter rn, and this one is for my very dear Gwen. She prompted #9: "You're in love with her" for Maelica feat. Conrad, and I promptly said No, you know, like a liar. 
> 
> [Title/mood music.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KbOLwk1DC3M)
> 
> ~~It was fun to try and get my characters to actually talk about their feelings for once, you feel?~~

“You’re in love with her.”

The voice in the dark under the trees is gentle and almost certainly nonthreatening, but the words jolt Mae, make her twist her body around like she’s just taken an arrow between the ribs. She only just manages to bite down on her tongue to keep from crying out, and even then the night is so still the scuffing of her boots across the grass already sounds like a screech—enough of a racket to carry all the way across the campsite to Celica’s tent, where a lamp still burns behind the canvas flap.

it does exactly nothing for her panic to see it’s only Conrad—Celica’s brother, which she’s only just learned is who the Masked Knight is without the mask on—regarding her with wide eyes and palms conciliatorily raised. The apology is already spilling out of his mouth, as if all this while he had been meaning to say _that_ instead of, well, the other thing.

“Forgive me. Forgive me. I’m sorry. Forget I said anything.”

Mae thinks about all the things she might say to that, _Yeah, sure_ and _Already done_ and _Who said anything? Did you hear anyone say anything? Not me._ She cycles back and forth through them in her mind, but all that she can manage around the lump in her throat in the end is a half-hearted “Gah.”

It seems disingenuous, though, to leave it at that, and she figures she could do worse than come clean to Celica’s _brother,_ of all people. She almost owes him the truth, and sans mask and horse and lance he looks less likely to pick her up by the ankles and shake her Intentions out of her. Maybe. Probably. So she sighs, tugging sheepishly at the end of one pigtail, turning her eyes up to the stars overhead and then down to her toes. She finds she can look pretty much anywhere but at his face, or at the still-lit tent that she’d been staring at with piercing focus since she got up to take the midnight watch.

Mae’s not dumb. She knows where her thoughts go when they wander; it’s not her fault that too often her eyes start to follow before she can stop them. “Was it the jumping in front of an arrow for her that tipped you off? Or the sighing? Cripes, I was sighing, wasn’t I.”

“You weren’t sighing. And I imagine anyone among our company would take an arrow for Anthiese if they had to, and if they were close enough, so in that regard, you’re fine. For the most part.” Conrad comes to stand beside her at the forest’s edge, right where their camp borders the treeline. “It was just a feeling, I suppose. And a look that you have about you, sometimes.”

 _A look._ Truth be told, Mae knows she should have been watching the trees for unwanted presences, signs of danger. But she had seen the light in Celica’s tent and had just—lost the ability to look at anything else. Some guard she’d be, in the event of an ambush. _A look, huh._

“It’s all right,” Conrad tells her, like he can hear her thoughts. After a pause he adds, a little wistfully, “She’s always been easy to love. Though you’d probably know that better than I would, now.”

He’s probably thinking about wasted time. Mae doesn’t have a sibling herself, but she can sort of imagine how it must feel—knowing how much you’ve missed out on, knowing you have so much to learn about someone you care for. And he’s right, Celica’s always been easy to love, the sort of person you’d put your heart through that kind of work for and not think twice about it, just because.

Even now, Mae thinks, even now that she wears a crown and a sword and a different name than the one Mae’s called her for years. Even now that they’re walking every day toward their enemies, and every step closer shows them a little more about how much poison has marred the land all the way down to its bones, and Celica doesn’t sleep, and it’s become harder to make her laugh. Mae still remembers that when they first set out, they were laughing all the time, arm in arm with Boey and Genny, leaning on each other. She imagines the Mae of back then would have seen Celica light her lamp and not hesitated to pull the tent flap aside, and sat at the foot of her bed telling her stories until the oil ran out and they curled up side by side to sleep.

All that feels like a different life, now. Even so, she’s easy to love. The hard part is everything else.

“Sometimes I’m not so sure,” says Mae. “I mean, yeah, I’ve known her a long time. But since we set out, I’ve heard her say things that…” _Things that scare me,_ she thinks, and feels her hands go clammy. She drops her eyes again, scuffing at the already scuffed-up grass with the toe of her boot. “Things that make her seem really far away, I guess. So far away I can’t guess what she’s thinking, and I start wondering if I know anything about her at all.”

Something flickers across Conrad’s face then, some shadow of understanding. He looks sympathetic, like he knows what she means and also wishes he didn’t.

“You know, when we were children, she was always stronger than me. Braver. More independent. She always wanted to do things herself.” He still smiles when he says it, and Mae can very well guess what he’s imagining. A smaller version of him following a smaller version of Celica through a big, well-lit house, always with his fists in the back of her dress, always letting her lead him. “Not quite like this, though. You may be on to something there.”

“Right, right! And I always think to myself, see, what would _you_ understand about what Celica’s going through, Mae? A future queen! Ha! You probably don’t know the half.” She makes herself laugh for the hell of it, the way she always does when she’s upset, just to prove she still can. It doesn’t surprise her at all that it comes out sounding wooden, as if some huge hand is squeezing the breath out of her body in little bursts— _Ha! Ha! Ha! What do_ you _know, Mae?_ “And maybe I _don’t_ know the half, but she’s my best friend, so I still wish she’d let me in a little, I guess? That’s more important than…” _What I want,_ she almost says, but she lets the words trail too much, and chickens out of saying them in the end. “… anything else.”

What she wants is what she’s always wanted. What she wants is for things to be different—which isn’t to say that what she wants is for Celica to love her back. Sometimes Mae thinks of the island, of the line of beach where they’d always walk barefoot to gather shells, water to their ankles, salt in their hair. Once, long ago when they were younger and it was much easier to ask these things, Mae remembers she’d asked Celica if she was happy, and Celica had answered _of course_ so quickly Mae thought at the time that it couldn’t possibly have been a lie.

Mae doesn’t believe, now, that it was a lie—but neither can she help wondering whether Celica would still choose the same, if she felt more like there were other choices. Other answers, other paths to walk. They’re older now, and although Mae doesn’t feel any wiser she does at least know what she’d really meant to say that day.

_Would you still stay with us if you didn’t have to?_

“I understand.” Conrad looks so much like Celica in that moment—soft, coppery hair, bright eyes—but also so unlike, in how easy it is to read his face. It’s all there in the lines across his brow, in the set of his jaw; so much love that doesn’t know quite where to go, so much fear too. No wonder he leans so hard on that mask of his. “I’m sorry. I wish I knew what to say.”

She grins. “Nah, it’s okay. I don’t think anyone does.”

The truth is Mae knows she’s just as bad—too full of feelings, too sloppy at hiding them, everything in her heart just spilling out in a careless word or a glance that lingers a little too long. If nothing else, it helps not to be the only one who worries. Or, rather, not the only one who worries so transparently.

“I can relieve you,” Conrad says. When he shifts his weight from foot to foot and draws himself to stand a little straighter, hold his head a little higher, she can see the knight in him. But then his face softens into a smile, and he just looks like himself again. “Please get some sleep.”

“Right, thanks.” As if on cue, she yawns, everything dragging at her catching up all at once. “I’m glad she’s got you again. I know you’ll keep a good eye on her.”

He nods. “We both will. No matter what happens.”

In the distance the light in the tent flickers, gutters a little, then brightens as Celica adds more oil to her lamp. Mae follows that light in her mind as she turns her steps back toward her own tent, watching—waiting, though she doesn’t know what for, only that she’ll go to meet it in a heartbeat when it comes.


End file.
